After spending $360 to $680 million on HealthCare.gov, Kathleen Sebelius has now asked that contractors "bring in their A team." Does this inspire your confidence in the government's accountability (yes) or deeply concern you (no)?

After spending $360 to $680 million on HealthCare.gov, Kathleen Sebelius has now asked that contractors "bring in their A team." Does this inspire your confidence in the government's accountability (yes) or deeply concern you (no)?

Let's put this in perspective.

For $680 million you could hire a team of 1,000 top-notch programmers and pay them each $300,000. With the remaining $380 million you could build a server farm with 10,000 servers and all the networking gear it takes to connect them. You could then rent the required data center space and after all that still have $100 million left over for dinner and drinks.If anyone thought this would turn out any other way they have ignored the past 100 years of government wasting and abusing our tax dollars.

The Government is Afraid

This is just another shot of the government spending thousands of dollars to do...What? Mess up a website? Why not just spend about 100 dollars a month and create a website with Weebly in a week? For those that think the government will not do that for security reasons, then the Government should buy the code from Weebly and "secure" it. My view.

The A team should have been on board for that price.

Note that this is not about Obamacare pro or con, but more than a few will take that track. This is about accountability. If taxpayer monies were spent, even if those taxpayers were Chinese, we still should get at least what we paid for if not more. If the A team is just now coming on board, who did we get in first place?

Themohawkninja .....This is not pro or con Obamacare. This is not pro or con www.Healthcare.Gov. The question is clearly about accountability. Read some of the other responses on this page, or have someone else read them to you.

I never said it was pro or con either, but the point remains that you are comparing two very different things. Plus, (after reading some other responses as you always suggest), if people keep misreading your post, maybe you should re-word it.

Themohawkninja . To quote you "you keep comparing a website to a federal healthcare bill." This question is not pro ACA or anti ACA , it is about how the government spends MY money. Read some of the NO votes herein.

I'm not saying that you are pro or con, but (as some no votes state), they refer to programmers for the website, as your question refers to a website. However, you are asking that the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars is relevant to government accountability. Those hundreds of millions of dollars are towards a website, and the accountability appears to be related to the ACA, pro, con, directly, indirectly, or otherwise.

Themohawkninja ..It is with great restraint that is steer clear of using pejorative epithets, but the question may be restated this way for you.... "After spending $360 to $680 million on the F22 Raptor , and it does not work , and the Pentagon has now asked that contractors "bring in their A team." Does this inspire your confidence in the government's accountability (yes) or deeply concern you (no)?"

No, because there isn't anything to be inspired about. Perhaps if I was involved in the project, and after seeing the failure first hand I was inspired by a way to fix it, but as someone with negligible knowledge of aerodynamics, and less about aircraft engineering, I have nothing to go off of for inspiration.

Themohawkninja .. I am aghast that you cannot comprehend the question without bringing in anomalous propagation. If you spent one hundred dollars, not on healthcare or an airplane, but on a daily issue of a newspaper and then found out that the newspaper was incomplete, had missing pages, or some other problem having to do with the newspaper vis a vie the daily issue of that newspaper and nothing else like string theory or the price of gasoline, would that fact and that fact alone leave you concerned?

No, not really. As you assert, that is just one daily issue of the newspaper, and therefore that means that only one of the issues of the news paper ever written had issues. Since it's just the one issue, I can console the Internet, or another newspaper for the day to get any missing information that I need.

One month before HealthCare.Gov went live, a memo was circulated within the agency responsible for building it, revealing that the website central to Obamacare’s implementation contained “limitless” security flaws that could lead to identity theft and breaches of consumers’ health data.The man in charge of the website, somehow, did not get the memo.

House Speaker John A. Boehner predicted Wednesday that by the end of the month, more Americans will have lost their insurance by being kicked off existing health plans than the number who were able to sign up in the flawed online healthcare.Gov website. And the early numbers back him up,

The numbers appear to be everywhere with the only source stating anything about this year (2013) is that while Obama asserted that people could keep their healthcare plans, which as far as the bill was concerned WAS a factual statement, the Department of Health and Human Services narrowed the parameters which removed the grandfather clause that allowed people to keep their plans.

Fewer than 27,000 Americans signed up for insurance on the glitch-plagued healthcare.Gov website in the month of October, putting the Obama administration far below its own target for the program’s rollout.....Yahoo news

Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent. Source ....Kaiser health news.Org

I know that reading comprehension is not a strong point for you. Reread the statement, Fewer than 27,000 Americans signed up for insurance on the glitch-plagued healthcare.Gov website in the month of October. Now pay particular attention to the part that says Fewer than 27,000 Americans signed up for insurance on the glitch-plagued healthcare.Gov website . Now read where it says signed up for insurance on the glitch-plagued healthcare.Gov website. Now notice that it does not refer to the state exchanges, so the 27,000 number is not only good, it came from the same government that you seem destined to carry water for.

As for the second statement, the department of Health and Human services really has a lot to explain for then, seeing as it appears to be their fault this all happened (your quote).

Is your confidence inspired now, or should we get you another water buffalo.

I don't see what is wrong with my reading comprehension. If one site says that 27,000 Americans (which implies out of all of the states) signs up for the website, and another says that there are individual states that have had 20,000 or more Americans sign up (which means that there are many times the stated 27,000 number of Americans that signed up), then the evidence is questionable.

As for my faith in the government, one mistake in one government organization, lost confidence for the whole government does not justify.

Has anyone else noticed a problem with how this mohawk nincompoop fails to understand a question, but never lets that stop him from answering something similar to but different from the question that is posed

If you are going to insult my intelligence without addressing what question I am answering that somehow isn't the question you are asking, while also neither addressing the alleged reading comprehension problem, then I am beginning to question you as a troll.

A person can be intelligent and still have a reading comprehension problem. Notice that I questioned your ability to comprehend what you read ... Call that point A..... And you leap to point B which is not in the discourse but only in your head.....Then to C ....Then to D....Then you arrive at point E which is that I have somehow insulted your intelligence. Print out this entire line of discourse ..... Unedited..... And show it to someone who can send you to the the correct professional.

Once again, you are just tip-toeing around the question without directly answering it. Don't just say point A or B, actually SPECIFY each individual issue to prove your point. Otherwise, I see no evidence in your assertion, since you keep asking me to go to a third party that doesn't exist along with spending pointless amounts of money to go to some professional that I don't need to see.

Answer the question correctly this time. Where has my reading comprehension gone wrong?

When I cited the 27,000 number as the number of people who signed up through the FEDERAL website, I posit that as point A. You took point B as Obamacare is good. Point C then is you must find other data. Point D is you found STATE programs that signed up more. Then your point E is that the evidence is questionable. What evidence? The 27,000 number from the FEDERAL government? That Obamacare is good? You brought in irrelevant STATE data, which BTW supports my position. Do you see how far you have diverged from the original question?

The questionable evidence is the number of people that signed up for the ACA. The state data is relevant, because if one site says that just as many people signed up for the ACA as another site said the entire country did, then either 20,000+ people signed up in the whole country, or 20,000+ people signed up for it per state. That is a big difference, and therefore the evidence is questionable. The original question has already long been diverted from on both of our parts.

Point 1: Okay...Point 2: Okay...Point 3: You attacked the numbers I asserted as a way to show that your asserted numbers may not be true. It was irrelevant to the reading comprehension, as it was about the discussion prior to that. There are two different discussions happening right now.Point 4: See point 3Point 5: See point 3

The questionable evidence is the number of people that signed up for the ACA .....Your quote,,,,, is incorrect. The question was clearly the number of people who signed up through the healthcare.Gov portal. Your bringing in people who signed up through other means is the irrelevant data. Bringing in irrelevant data points out a problem in your comprehension of what is being asked. The question does not and never did involve the state portals.

The state data is relevant, because if one site says that just as many people signed up for the ACA as another site said the entire country did, then either 20,000+ people signed up in the whole country, or 20,000+ people signed up for it per state. .... Your quote..... And more evidence that there is a problem at your end.

Perhaps you do not comprehend that the state portals and healthcare.Gov are two separate and distinct websites. We are speaking here only about Healthcare.Gov. Not about Andromeda nebula, baseball bats, wings of eagles, tic tacs, vitamins, cup and saucers.

Comprehension of something and knowledge of something are two very different things. If such things are different, would you mind backing that assertion up? ... Your quote.... From where has this come? To what are you referencing? You say they are two very different things, then ask me to back up your assertion on their differences? This whole line of discourse BTW backs up my point entirely. Are you still dealing with the singular website or have we moved to discussing the Andromeda Galaxy, which BTW, is on a collision course with us.

Unfortunately, had my next comment not gotten chosen for random moderation, it would have made more sense. The thing that I wanted you to back up was, was your assertion that there are state portals that differ from the main healthcare site, and furthermore, how my specific source is about those state portals, and not just information about how many people from a given state state signed on to healthcare.Gov.

Also, if you are interested in discussing the collision of the Andromeda galaxy with the Milky Way galaxy, go ahead. I am currently an undergraduate astronomy student, and am fairly knowledgeable on such topics from studying them over the last few years.

Quote from CNN ..... On signing up, only 26,794 people have completed the enrollment process for health care coverage through the federal insurance marketplace, including HealthCare.Gov, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters on a conference call.In addition, 79,391 have enrolled for coverage through separate state-based exchanges..... End quote. Note that CNN has called the state-based exchanges SEPARATE. Do you comprehend the term separate? It means distinct from what the topic of this opinion question is. That topic is about the website Healthcare.Gov. And not about the state sites. They are, to quote CNN, separate.The topic is not and never was about how many people sign up for policies under the provision of the ACA. It is limited to the accountability of the expenditure of federal funds on a website that should have been beta tested prior to going live.

Point being that you cannot comprehend what you actually read. Healthcare.Gov is not equal to the state websites. They are, to quote CNN, separate. QED. Also I will NOT discuss astronomy with you because you have already wasted too much of my time.

Quote from CNN exactly as was shown above ........ 79,391 have enrolled for coverage through separate state-based exchanges.....End quote. Notice it does not say PORTALS it says STATE- BASED EXCHANGES . STATE- BASED EXCHANGES....STATE- BASED EXCHANGES......STATE- BASED EXCHANGES.....NOT PORTALS . How can you continue to think that your comprehension is not impaired. STATE- BASED EXCHANGES....STATE- BASED EXCHANGES.....STATE- BASED EXCHANGES.

Sorry, you were talking about portals, so I thought the exchanges were just another way of saying portals, as I had never heard of the term portal used in that way before. Calm down, man, and take a chill pill or something. You could really use one with all the caps lock and insulting coming out of your keyboard.

Allow me to summarize your opinion......You that he pens 125 handwritten notes every year, which certainly sounds nice. But the fact is that there is no need for cursive — a signature is just as legally binding in print. Plus, most people communicate mainly via computers and smartphones, as evidenced by the dying U.S. Postal Service. Morgan Polikoff, education professor at the University of Southern California, argues for the death of cursive in The New York Times:....... How is that for on topic

To quote you ......What is the relevance if this? It has nothing to do with out discussion......End quote.

This is no less divergent than you have been

Francis A. Johnson was a quiet man who spent his entire life in Meeker County. For reasons that are lost to time, he began rolling a ball of twine in his basement 1950. Francis rolled twine four hours a day, every day. He eventually moved the ball onto his front lawn and used railroad jacks to ensure proper wrapping; Johnson cared as much about his ball's roundness as its diameter. For 29 years this magnificent sphere evolved at Johnson's farm, and he eventually built a circular open air shed to protect it from the elements.

Sometimes even the doctors must be evacuated from the advancement of the plague.

In 1845 while tangerines were thrown about, Robert E Lee told his troops to nail pancakes onto the wagon.

Lincoln Davis of Tennessee, who voted against the bill while in Congress after hearing a loud outcry from his constituents against it. Davis says he was taken down in the anti-ACA fervor anyway. "I voted the way people wanted me, the way they asked me.

To quote you .......However, you are asking that the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars is relevant to government accountability. Those hundreds of millions of dollars are towards a website, and the accountability appears to be related to the ACA, pro, con, directly, indirectly, or otherwise.....End quote

After this came your chauvinistic defense of the ACA, when clearly the topic was not ACA. One can only assume that you are finding something in the ACA that clouds you comprehension of the question at hand. Perhaps a cornucopia of freebies?

BTW the expenditure of those hundreds of millions of dollars for a flawed website proves my point.

BTW your calling up state figures that are greater than the feds also proves my point.

I will bet that you do not even know what my point is, when it is clearly stated, at least for everybody else but you, in the opinion question itself.

While we wait for my last comment to clear moderation, let me simplify for you.

Elmo has a house. The only people allowed in the house that Elmo owns are people with health insurance. The front door of Elmo's house is very flawed and people have trouble getting through. This is the federal door built by Grouch. Only 30,000 people came through that door. The back door of Elmo's house is a little better. It was built by Big Bird, here representing the states, and 70,000 people came through this door. Now there are 100,000 people in Elmo's house.

How many people came through the front door of Elmo's house? Thirty thousand says the Count. Then why. Asks Maria, did we pay the Grouch so much money? Maria is deeply concerned about how Grouch used the money.

Maria is better at comprehension than is Thermohawkninja , says the Count, Elmo, Maria and Big Bird.

I can comprehend just fine (again, repeating myself. You can't seem to comprehend either).

I still don't see reason for concern, as nobody could have known that something bad would have happened as far as we know.

As I stated in one of my first responses, "websites have glitches". Nothing is perfect, and if something is wrong, you don't get all worried over one thing going wrong. That's just plain overly-pessimistic.

Your quote ....I still don't see reason for concern, as nobody could have known that something bad would have happened as far as we know.....End quote.

Now review this news - already cited previously.

One month before HealthCare.Gov went live, a memo was circulated within the agency responsible for building it, revealing that the website central to Obamacare’s implementation contained “limitless” security flaws that could lead to identity theft and breaches of consumers’ health data.The man in charge of the website, somehow, did not get the memo.

Also, number of money spent on website is not automatically related to the size of the glitch. Computer code is very sensitive by nature, as I have coded many programs over the years, and mis-wriiten single lines of code can crash the entire program.

OKAY one last attempt to get you to see.........Your quote .....Number of money spent on website is ....Automatically related to the size of the .....End quote ..... Lack of economic accountability. This is true by inspection and introspection.

Your quote .....Also, explain how those hundreds of millions of dollars "proves" you "point"?,,,,, end quote. Those hundreds of millions of dollars "proves" my "point" exactly.What do you think we should have gotten for $680 million?

...How many people came through the front door of Elmo's house? Thirty thousand says the Count. Then why. Asks Maria, did we pay the Grouch so much money? Maria is deeply concerned about how Grouch used the money.

Maria is better at comprehension than is Thermohawkninja , says the Count, Elmo, Maria and Big Bird.

BTW that offer for you to buy some land from me still stands. It is one acre of desert and only costs $14 billion dollars. I bet you thing]k that is a bargain.

Okay, so you can take random parts of quotes that I said and formulate it into a sentence that I didn't say. Well done.

As for what I think that $680 million dollars could be spent on? I would say a GoPro for every police officer in the nation to combat police brutality.

I don't know why you reiterated your Elmo story, or reiterated that which I have already disproved again and again. You can't seem to understand that my reading comprehension is fine, and that I honestly am neither concerned or inspired with the governments accountability based of the healthcare.Gov website.

Oh please, I've seen acres of land in New Mexico for only a few hundred per acre. Your insults are futile, and are slowly persuading me to report you.

Your quote which you will say you did not say....As for what I think that $680 million dollars could be spent on? I would say a GoPro for every police officer in the nation to combat police brutality....End quote.

And that would be what I would hope is a more ACCOUNTABLE use of the money than squandering it on a failed website.

Your quote which you will say you did not say,,,,,,I've seen acres of land in New Mexico for only a few hundred per acre.,,, end quote.

And I have seen websites which are cheaper and more functional than Healthcare.Gov. That is why I am deeply concerned,

The fact that you are not deeply concerned indicates that you fail to comprehend the magnitude of the problem. You seem to think that the $680 million is somebody else's money. I say it is my money, and someone needs to find out how it was spent. Keep watching the news. You will see.

You have the opportunity to report any and all of my posts, but be prepared to defend you allegations.

OK kid, let us cut the the bottom line. How much of your money would have to have been spent on a failed website for you to be concerned that the money had not been properly spent? One billion? Two billion? Write down a number.

The amount of money is irrelevant. For the third or forth time, I must reiterate the fact that websites have glitches, and no amount of money can change that. If the government spent $10 on the website, there is a possibility for the website to fail just as if the government had spent $10 trillion on it.

Money does not, and will never matter for such a question.

I have a suggestion for you. Learn HTML and maybe some Javascript, and start learning how websites are made. Maybe that will give you insight into how I view your question.

Here is the problem in your line of reasoning .....Your quote .....The amount of money is irrelevant.... And no amount of money can change that.......End quote. If fact the amount of money was the very core of the question.

This question was about the fact the government spent money with questionable return. Perhaps when you start paying your own way you will begin to see the value of a dollar.

I understand that the amount of money is the core of the question. Let me list what I was saying to give you a better idea.

1. Question implies that the amount of money spent on a website is relevant to the accountability of the person/group making the site.2. Above logic is false, as a website's stability is not related to the amount of money spent on it.3. Therefore asking the question that you have asserted doesn't really make much sense.4. As such, I have asserted my answer to your specific question a while ago, which was "neither inspiring or deeply concerning".

2. Definition of ACCOUNTABILITY ,,,,,The obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner. It also includes the responsibility for money or other entrusted property.

Allow me to reiterate for your benefit .....Accountability = responsibility for money or other entrusted property.

You are confusing ACCOUNTABILITY with stability. Where did you infer that stability had anything at all to do with this opinion question?

3. One does not assert a question.4. Your finding the question "neither inspiring or deeply concerning" is asserting that you are fiscally NUMB to the implications herein. Having been involved in numerous government projects ...Inside and outside.... We had a saying . Bang for the buck always beats a mire for millions. Keep watching the news.

"You are confusing ACCOUNTABILITY with stability. Where did you infer that stability had anything at all to do with this opinion question?"

No, I am not confusing those things, but rather you are misreading my posts. I am inferring that stability is related to the question, because the question is about the healthcare.Gov website, and I am inferring that the only reason that you would be concerned at all about that much money being spend, is that the website has flaws. So, unless you are simply worried about the amount of money being spent regardless of the end product (which by stating "okay" to point one, leads me to believe that the flaws in the website are relevant to the question asked), that is how I am inferring such things.

Fine... "ask" a question... My point still remains.

Why do you keep hammering at my opinion? Why is it so concerning to you that I don't care? I have never paid taxes, I am not on a government healthcare plan, and I understand the issues that come with programming websites, so the amount of money spend has literally no effect on my existence, and therefore I don't care.

Why do I care? Why do I hammer? Because I want the world to be a better place. And if you think out of control spending by the government ..... Your quote...... Has literally no effect on my existence, and therefore I don't care.,,,,, end quote,,, you had better take an economics class and do so quickly.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.Watch your words, for they become actions.Watch your actions, for they become habits.Watch your habits, for they become character.Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

All these by Edmund Burke 1729-1797

PS....If you don't care, then go away...Preferably to a place devoid of internet access.

I have taken an economics class, and while there may be some miniscule chance that it may have had the slightest effect on me, it's clearly nothing that I see need to worry over. You mind explaining just HOW it effects me, and how that effect is apparently sufficient enough to make me concerned, instead of just telling me to do something that I have already done, like the answer will be said as clear as day with no need for interpretation?

Evil and good are subjective.

Also, your whole quote on "watch this, for they become that" is a slippery slope fallacy, a near textbook one at that.

Lastly, the world needs more apathy. It keeps the bullies away, and the media out of stories of violence and destruction. My apathy has probably saved my life.

680 million tax payers dollars spent on Healthcare.Gov website, which does not work.$22 billion paid out in interest on previous debt service.$1.1 trillion shortfall in federal budget just last year financed by sale of treasury notes.$2.4 trillion in tax revenues sent to federal governmentNational debt $17 trillion.

These are all financial sledgehammers waiting to hit you over the head. As usual, you do not see it.

I could not care less about your apathy. Do you comprehend the humor therein? Probably not.

Print out this entire line of discourse....Unedited..... And show it to someone at University charged with human resource.

$680 million squandered on a faulty website.$22 billion spent for debt service on treasury bonds sold in prior years$1,1 trillion dollars of new treasury bonds sold to cover deficit$2.4 trillion in taxes taken out of the economy $17 trillion nation debt

These are all financial sledgehammers waiting to strike you over the head. You just do not comprehend it yet.

As for your apathy, I could not care less. There is humor there that I fear is wasted on you.

Evil and good are absolutes. Your perception of them is that which is subjective.

Print out this entire line of discourse...Unedited.... And show it to someone at University charged with human resource. Their opinion may be quite beneficial to you.

Yet you never answered my question. You just keep tip-towing around it like you have many times throughout this discussion.

Also, I highly doubt anyone would have the will to read the whole discussion and give me their opinion. Seriously, who would read this whole discussion about a website just to give their opinion? Nobody, because it's a waste of time. I might as well ask you to ask someone else the same thing, and see if they will actually refute my points instead of tip-towing around them with analogies or ignoring them.

I'm done here, since you have straw manned much of what I have said, and I have to re-ask my question multiple times for you to stop tip-towing around it and just answer it. You just senselessly insult my comprehension and ability to understand.